Anniversary conference ESPAnet, Edinburgh, September 2012

Just returned from the annual conference of the European Social Policy Analysis Network – ESPAnet. Ten years ago I organised the inaugural conference of ESPAnet in Copenhagen after having founded the network with Jochen Clasen and Wim van Oorschot. This year we celebrated its ten year anniversary with a splendid conference with lots of good papers and high quality discussions. The conference was organised by good colleagues Jochen Clasen, Daniel Clegg and Allison Koslowski from Edinburg University. Olli Kangas and I organised a well-attended stream “Crafting Comparative Social Policy Analysis” and I presented a paper on “Social Investment or Retrenchments? The Great Recession, the European Union and National Welfare Reforms”. Great to see many old friends and colleagues as well as many young talented scholars. ESPAnet has proven a real succes and this bodes well for the future of European social policy analysis.For more on the conference see www.espanet2012.info and on ESPAnet see http://www.espanet.org